Historical Artifacts

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Just a community for everyone to share artifacts, reconstructions, or replicas for the historically-inclined to admire!

Generally, an artifact should be 100+ years old, but this is a flexible requirement if you find something rare and suitably linked to an era of history, not a strict rule. Anything over 100 is fair game regardless of rarity.

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PugJesus

A Machine for Making Rifle Stocks - The Blanchard Lathe (1820s) (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago by PugJesus to c/historyartifacts

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9697959

The so-called Blanchard lathe [actually, it’s a shaper since the cutter is a rotating wheel] works much like a modern key-cutting machine with a stock blank [a rough gunstock form] in place of the key blank. An iron master form, in the shape of the musket stock, slowly rotates allowing a guide wheel to roll over it and to direct, in turn, the cutting wheel as it makes identical movements on the rotating wooden stock blank.

https://www.nps.gov/spar/learn/historyculture/thomas-blanchard-and-his-lathe.htm

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[–] homesweethomeMrL 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Fun fact - this method would be adopted and optimized by Peavey to make guitars in the 70s.

🤘

[–] PugJesus 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Really? That's awesome! Funny how technology can find new applications over the years.

[–] homesweethomeMrL 3 points 4 days ago

Yes although just to clarify, I don't mean that-specific-version-of-the-machine, but the modern equivalent.

Here's Hartley Peavey talking about how they came up with the idea and what it was to implement it in guitar manufacture.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I immediately recognized that top pic from the Springfield Armory museum. It's definitely worth a visit for anyone passing through central Massachusetts.

[–] Anticorp 4 points 4 days ago

I just found a video of that exhibit on YouTube, but unfortunately I'm unable to find a video of this thing in action.

[–] Anticorp 3 points 4 days ago

Wow! That's amazing! I guess I always thought that they were made with like saws and hand sanding and stuff.